


Lotus

by Kangoo



Series: April Bouquet [23]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Emotionally Repressed, Other, Physically Running Away From Your Feelings, implied/referenced PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:54:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23777953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kangoo/pseuds/Kangoo
Summary: Only take as much as you can grab with two hands
Relationships: Shin Malphur/Nonbinary Guardian (Destiny), The Drifter/Nonbinary Guardian (Destiny)
Series: April Bouquet [23]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1685779
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	Lotus

**Author's Note:**

> summary from florence + the machine's song 'patricia'
> 
> occam is a Mess. for more information, see: huhh every single thing i've written with them in it i guess
> 
> theme: far from the one you love

Here's the truth:

Occam doesn't trust easily. They never did, even back when they could still feel a knife press against their throat and smile anyway, terrified and elated in equal measure. They've always kept themself at arm's length from anyone, at a safe distance from pain. Watching over people with no one to watch over them. It made them a good sniper, a decent Titan in that they still protected people, in their own way.

It hasn’t gotten any better since then.

When they realize, one gloomy morning, that they trust the Drifter, that they— _care_ for him, it doesn’t fill them with the joyful relief of a loner finally finding solace in friendship. It just feels them with dread. They can’t keep people alive: it’s out of their hands, no matter how hard they try. And if they get attached, and if that attachment _dies_ — it hurts.

And Occam fears nothing more than getting hurt.

(Once upon a time they relished it. Embraced the pain as a stinging reminder of survival. What went wrong, they wonder, and even in their own mind its rhetorical. The answer comes anyway, unbidden, uncalled for.

 _Everything_.)

In the end, Occam runs.

They're not proud of it. They're not _not_ proud of it. In truth they don't think about it. No more than someone would think about their own heartbeat, except on some rare occasions where the what-ifs keep them awake before the usual nightmares can wake them up. And even then it's not regret, not quite.

Running comes as easily to Occam as breathing does. Easier, maybe. Each time they breath they trace the path of the air to their lungs and out and devise a dozen of ways to cut that route. Crush the trachea; hands around the throat, squeezing, or an arm, more efficient; a knife to the throat, between the fifth and sixth rib, in the back angled just right. A bullet (throat, tearing it apart). A bullet (lung, whichever, ideally both). A bullet (if you're a good enough shot it doesn't matter where you aim).

The more Occam learns about killing a man the more acutely aware of their own mortality they are. Their life is a tower of blown glass balanced in the palm of one hand, propped up by the butt of a gun. Fragile. Easily toppled over. What does it take to kill a Guardian? Less than they think. Bad luck. Good aim.

A bullet.

(Through a Ghost, exploding in a burst of Light and broken shell pieces.)

A bullet.

(Through the head, the Traveler blinded by the lingering Darkness.)

A bullet.

( _If you're a good enough shot it doesn't matter where you aim_.)

(Occam is an excellent shot. They can't trust the guy on the other side not to be, too.)

-

They pack what they can and pile up the rest, light a match, breathe in the gasoline smoke and itch for a smoke. It’s the one lethal habit they kept after everything but their last pack is lying on top of the pile. They didn’t really think this through.

(Take only what you can carry. Don't get attached to what you'll have to leave behind. Don't leave anything behind.)

They watch the leaves of the plants they carefully tended to shrivel and crumble in the flames. Unblinking. Unflinching. Build themself an armor with the ashes and make themself small under it, easily hidden. Easily overlooked.

There's only one pot left. A small one. Baby blue flowers, the kind they refuse to name or look at for too long. Sentimental flowers that they couldn’t throw on the bonfire with the rest. They sneak into the Drifter's room while he's out and leaves them on the closest surface, next to a still-beating Knight heart. It'll keep the flowers company while he's gone–

He's not, though. He stands in the doorway, back-lit by the corridor. Occam didn't bother turning the lights on. They didn't plan to stick around. Still don't.

"Leaving without a good-bye?” He says, in that lighthearted way of his that never fooled anyone. “That's cold, brother. Didn’t take you for the kind to kiss and run."

And that’s the whole problem, isn’t it? Love — because that’s what it is, in the end — is dangerous. It’s a risk, and not one they’re willing to take. Not now, with the Nine at their door, Darkness on their heels. They _have_ to run. Drifter knows it, too, by the look in his eyes. A kind of resolute anticipation, like he knows what’s about to happen and he’s still waiting for… what. For Occam to offer an explanation? A map to their next landfall, an address to send postcards to?

An invitation to come along?

( _Would he_ come along?)

Would Drifter do the same, were their places reversed? Or would he find a better way? Stay anyway? Would he come if Occam asked?

He would. That’s what they scare the most. Whether or not he’d want to come, he _would_. As selfish as they are – and they are selfish, Light, they'd keep the whole world tucked behind their teeth if they could get their hand on it – they can't ask that of him.

He’s a liability.

(Maybe if they keep telling that to themself it will come true.)

Easier to survive if you only have to worry about your own ass. Better chances when you're only hiding your sorry carcass, when you don't have to choose between your beating heart and what it's beating for.

They close their eyes so they don’t have to look into his as they transmat to their ship without a word. When it comes down to it, Occam is just a runner. A coward. Doesn’t leave much room for teamwork.

(They don't know how to run away with anyone. Only how to run away from them.)

-

Out of all the people Occam's known, Thyme came the closest to figuring their nature.

"You're a monster, _Dredgen Khan_ ," she'd said, digging a finger in their chest as if to prove a point. "You're a rotten, despicable person, an even worse Guardian, and you won't even be worth the wood they make your coffin out of."

She was right, of course, the whole five foot nothing of righteous wrath of her, but for all the wrong reasons. She thought all their actions were evil because they were evil, too.

The truth is that Occam isn't evil. They're not an inhuman monster.

They're just scared. They're a small, pathetic person, scared out of their mind and made selfish and petty by the fear. It’s worse, maybe.

One can excuse many things for the greater good, be it real or made up by your own twisted sense of morality. Not many excuses for cowardice.

She'd been right then. Worst out of all this situation might be that they've been doing nothing but proving her right again and again since.

-

There aren’t many places a rogue Lightbearer can run off to and survive. Even they need food, need clean water and a shelter, and the few habitable places in the Sol system that survived the Collapse are held by Guardians.

This is how Occam washes up on the Tangled Shore. It’s easy to disappear there. Easy to get yourself killed, too, which is why they hadn’t initially planned to settle here. But they need supplies, which means they need Glimmers, and the Tangled Shore is where you come when your need for funds outweighs your morals. The rifle they carry ought to be enough to keep them safe, if only for the time it takes them to find a better long-term plan.

(Here’s what they forgot: it’s a hunting ground, and they’re more prey than apex predator.)

He comes to them weeks after their departure. By then they’ve somewhat settled into their role in the food chain of the Reef, enough to make the most of it. At the moment they’re sitting in a dark corner of the Spider’s Palace, waiting for an informant who’s running late by hours — not unusual but still worrying. Good sources are hard to find and they’d rather keep those they have alive for longer than a few days. Especially since what got them killed tends to travel up the chain back to Occam, and that’s more trouble than any job is worth.

But when someone finally sits down in front of them, it’s not the nervous Marauder they were expecting.

It’s Shin Malphur.

The sight is so unexpected that for a moment, Occam is actually too shocked to be afraid. They knew, kind of distantly, that this place was among the Renegade’s usual haunts, because where else to find Dredgens than among the dregs of polite society. But he’s not one to come out in the light, ironically enough. He prefers his face covered, his identity hidden — an intimidation tactic and security in equal measure. He keeps to the shadows, tracking his preys, waiting for the moment to strike. A Hunter, in every way.

( _My, Renegade, what long teeth you have._ )

Now, though, he sits opposite of Occam without a helmet. He has his hood up, for what it’s worth, casting his face in shadows but failing to cover the Light glowing through the cracks and flaring in his eyes. Every line of his body as he slouches in his chair is relaxed, careless, in every way the cocky Guardian he’s pretending to be. An easy prey for the people here. He keeps a hand on his gun, but even that seems more bravado than actual threat even though they know exactly how dangerous he is.

And then he smiles, a small, crooked thing that never reaches his eyes, and they remember.

Shin Malphur is a wolf.

Occam isn’t sure what to think of Shin Malphur’s presence here.

The two of them struck an uneasy alliance some time ago. Rather a ceasefire over their mutual fondness for the Drifter, unexplained though it may be on Malphur’s part. They’re not exactly on friendly terms, nor are they outwardly aggressive toward each other the way Occam could be with Thyme. They’re at that weird spot between awkward acquaintances and natural enemies born from dramatically opposed worldviews and several ill-advised hookups.

It’s not enough to guess his motives for coming after Occam, but just enough to stay on their guard when he leans forwards and says,

“You’re a difficult person to find.”

Not difficult enough, apparently. They lean back, try to keep some manner of a safe distance between the two of them. Shin’s grin widens at that, a quick flash of sincere emotion.

“I try to be. Why are you here?”

They know he’s here on his own volition — the person who can make Shin do anything he doesn’t want to has yet to exist or is long dead and gone — but they still feel a pang of… disappointment, perhaps, when he replies, “Checking you haven’t gone to the dark side. Mostly.”

They scowl. Their helmet hides the expression, which is always useful, but they can’t help feeling like they’re leaning on it too much. Not that they can go around without it safely, but it’ll do them good to keep it in mind. Just in case.

(It simply wouldn’t do to come back and be like an open book to-)

They shake themself out of this train of thought. Shin’s presence is more disturbing than expected.

“Well. I haven’t.” They go to open their arms as if to present themself to him before realizing, somewhat belatedly, that they look exactly the way they did the handful of times they met while Occam was on Dredgen business and it might look a little suspicious. They cross their arms over their chest instead. The movement looks awkward but they always feel like that when Shin is around. He has a knack for keeping them off-balance. “You can leave now. I’m busy.”

“Oh, if you’re waiting for your informant, don’t bother. I ran him off to be sure we wouldn’t be disturbed.”

“You-”

Occam makes a frustrated noise and rubs the visor of their helmet in a vain effort to alleviate the headache Shin is giving them. When they look up, Shin is staring at them. His arms are crossed over the table, fingers drumming on the grimy surface. He’s abandoned all pretenses of not being on the hunt: now the question is to find what he’s hunting.

Information, or Occam themself? Either is as likely, but one will be easier to get out of than the other.

(He’s like a dog with a bone when he finds something to be curious about. At least when he’s on a manhunt Occam can usually distract him once they’ve reached the ‘pinned against a wall with a gun pointed at his head’ part of the evening. Shin awakens parts of their psyche they thought they had killed off long ago. It’s unfortunate that it had to be the ‘life-threatening situations put them in the mood’ thing rather than their sense of empathy or what passed for their mental health back then.)

“You planning on coming back at some point?”

They look to the side, pretend to be surveying the room. They know it won’t fool him but it feels safer than looking him in the eyes when they say, “No.” and mean, _I want to_.

Knowing Shin he could read the lie right through the helmet.

“You’re a moron.”

“Fuck off.”

“No, you _are_. You know it too,” he says, not… entirely unkindly. “You’re not safer here than you were in the Tower. This place’s gonna be the first to get hit by the Darkness once it reaches the system, and that’s if you don’t get stabbed in the back by an overeager Fallen before that. What are you _doing_ _here_ , Occam?”

Running away, like they always do. Hiding and waiting for the fallout. They don’t tell him that, though. Why would they?

Instead they stand to their feet, almost knocking their chair back in the process. “That doesn’t concern you,” they say, as placidly as they can muster.

“It concerns Drifter, and he’s no use to me when he’s _moping_.”

That gives them a pause. They know they’re being played: the look he gives them, calculating and self-satisfied, tells them that much. Still they stay. Against their own better judgment.

“He’s not moping.”

“How would you know?”

“He doesn’t care enough to mope.”

They mean it like, ‘Drifter has been alive far too long to care about one asshole he’s been carefully Not Dating for months leaving for the Reef’. Obviously Shin has to take it the wrong way.

“Is this what it’s about? You think he doesn’t care enough?” When they don’t react to his guess, he shrugs. “Or maybe you’re the one who cares too much. You got too invested and then ran away so there would be no possibility of talking about it.”

This time, they flinch. They can’t help it. Shin can be unnervingly perceptive when he wants to be, and he’s usually cruel about it. At least with Occam. 

His grin tells them he smelled blood; now he’s going for the kill.

“You’re in l-”

They turn on their heels and stride off before he can finish the sentence. His voice chases them out of the room.

“You can’t run forever! Eventually he’s gonna be the one tracking you down, and what are you gonna do then, huh?”

Run further away, possibly. Or hide until he gets bored and leaves. It’s worked well for them so far.

**Author's Note:**

> i cheated on this one because i already had like 1.5k written i just. finished it lmao.
> 
> anyway occam sleeping around and hooking up with most if not all of the male population of the last city is directly responsible for his entire relationship with shin malphur and i think it's hilarious, actually
> 
> come haunt me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/2Fast2Kangoo) or [tumblr](https://youngster-monster.tumblr.com/)


End file.
